Subpar
by Sharadethia
Summary: After several PR disasters, Torchwood is being shutdown for an investigation by the government, and the team is forced to flee Wales. Rating is subject to change.
1. Chapter 1

The sound of keys clicking gently and hurriedly, the smell of freshly brewed coffee, the feel of the cold, dry air- these sensory inputs were everyday and common to the Torchwood team. Ianto looked back at the team behind him.

"The usual?" he asked. Owen looked up from the papers he was writing and grunted. Tosh glanced up, smiled, and nodded. Gwen did the same. And Jack didn't even bother with a response. He always took the usual. Ianto smiled at the thought and began to distribute the mugs. He set Owen's on a small clear spot on his desk. He handed Tosh's to her, Gwen received hers on a set of papers she wasn't looking at. Ianto walked up to Jack and held it out to him. "Your coffee, sir." he announced. Jack didn't look up from the papers he had in one hand and took it.

"Thanks, Ianto." he said absentmindedly and began to walk up to his office. Ianto looked at the rest of the team and walked down further into the Hub. He quickly ran through a mental checklist. He had to feed Janet, a job that he really didn't mind, but the rest of the team did, he had to borrow one of Tosh's laptops to archive more of the alien finds that were hidden away in the hub, and he had to restock the tourist office. The second activity was on-going, since Jack, and apparently the previous members of Torchwood, didn't care much for organisation. Ianto straightened his tie and opened the door to the Torchwood library. It wasn't a library so much a jumble of books that were stacked in every corner up the ceiling. As soon as Ianto picked a book up to place it on a shelf, dust flew up and filled the air. He dusted it off further and looked at the title. It was an encyclopaedia of aliens from the 20th century. Ianto smiled as he flipped through it. Most of the descriptions were vague and useless. He thumbed to the w's. The entry for weevil made him chuckle. A quick sketch of a weevil was on the left of the page and to the right was a quick over-view of their demeanour.

Weevils, as they are currently called, thrive in the sewers, away from the light. These creatures appear to be nocturnal and prefer to stay in the dark. When weevils leave their usual homes, they are a large threat to our society.

Ianto closed the book and nestled it into a shelf. He looked around in dismay at the hundreds of disorderly tomes that were tossed around. He pulled more books up out of the blankets of dust and began to stack them up in the gentlest way possible. They were almost sacred in Ianto's eyes, a remnant of a time long gone. Before everything changed into the disorder it was now. The future had to seem bleak when all around you, terrible things were happening. Everything the world knew seemed to be falling apart. There was a moment of silence as Ianto looked between all of the books. He then looked back at the door. He didn't care to spend more time than he had to in the tourist office, but he did need paper, pens, and tape to label the books like he wanted to. Perhaps he could kill two birds with one stone by cleaning the office and grabbing what he needed to finish the job in the library as best as he could. He walked out the door, closing it gently behind him as he did, and headed back to the main area of the Hub. When he did, he was met by Tosh quickly walking over to him.

"Ianto, I know you're busy, but I need to know where you put the files on the new computer system. I think I need to rewrite the codes for the…" Owen rolled his eyes and but in.

"Yeah, we know that you're a computer genius, Tosh. We don't want to hear it." She blushed quickly and gave an apologetic look to Ianto.

"Sorry. But where are the papers?" Ianto smiled at her and walked over to Gwen's desk. She didn't notice him as she began to flip through crime-scene photos on her computer. He pulled out a thick stack of papers and handed them to Tosh. "Thank you!" she said and scurried back to her seat. The door from Jack's office opened and Ianto looked up. The man was pulling on his jacket and holstering his gun.

"Weevil sighting. Ianto, want to come?" he asked.

"Are you sure it's a weevil this time, sir?" Ianto asked, smiling. It had seemed recently that Jack came up with more and more excuses to get Ianto out of the Hub with him, rather than there being any real threats to human society.

"Always is. So," He started down the stairs. "Are you coming or not?" Ianto nodded.

"Of course." he said, walking over to the table that held the coffee machine and grabbing his gun off of it.

"Good luck! Don't get hurt." Gwen called after them. Ianto placed the gun in the back of his pants and followed his boss out of the Hub. The alarm went off as they walked out of the main area and started up to the tourist office. Jack took one look at the state of things and turned to Ianto.

"Quite a mess." he commented snidely. Ianto frowned, the insult of his organizational skills did not go unnoticed.

"Your office, sir," he started, "is much worse…" Jack laughed it off.

"I was kidding, Ianto. It's too busy around here for either of us to do anything about the state of the Hub." He opened the door out of the office and walked to the large black van that had 'Torchwood' inscribed on the side. Jack jumped in the driver's side and Ianto walked to the passenger's, pulling out his cell phone. He quickly pulled up the recent police alerts. Jack started the car and began down the road out from the bay.

"Sir, where did you say this sighting was?" Ianto asked, tapping on his screen to get the page of alerts to scroll downward.

"I just got a call from the police. They just said it would be under the alerts." Ianto rolled his eyes, positive that Jack had been told, but promptly forgot. He pulled up the high-risk warnings and quickly found what he was looking for. His eyes widened and he shot a glare to Jack.

"Turn around!" he demanded. Jack raised an eyebrow. "The weevil is in the Cardiff shopping centre! Fifteen dead, Jack! Turn around!" Jack looked down the street and pulled a U-turn, cutting off several cars behind them. Through the honking of car horns, Jack turned to Ianto.

"What?" he demanded.

"You. Were. Going. The. Wrong. Way." Ianto said, emphasising the words. "And there are fifteen dead already! We-" he was cut off by the ringing of his phone. He pulled it open. "Ianto Jones," he said, sure that the call would not be positive.

"Where are you?" the voice of a familiar ex-policewoman demanded.

"Gwen, what do you know?" he asked, sure that one of her former co-workers had already called to complain.

"Sixteen dead at the shopping centre nearby. And they said the weevil was wearing one of our trackers." Ianto frowned.

"But we haven't released any… We're on our way, Gwen. Update me if there is anything new." He hung up the phone to look at Jack, who was swiftly weaving in and out of cars around them. He didn't say anything for fear that his boss would react negatively. The constant pressure of the increase of alien sightings was taking its toll on everyone in the team. Ianto wasn't going to argue otherwise. Even Owen had sobered up to the fact that they were all pulling double overtimes five out of seven days and quit complaining after the first week. And three weeks after the insanity began, it was still going strong. Jack saw the lights of dozens of police cars surrounded a mall and shot into the parking lot. He pulled up behind one and shut the van off. Ianto opened his door and walked out, Jack only a few steps behind him. A policewoman held her arms out to keep them from passing.

"Torchwood." Jack said, simply, using the magical code that seemed to get them wherever they needed. The woman scowled and stepped aside.

"Took long enough. We have thirty missing and seventeen deaths accounted for." The death toll was climbing quickly and the heavy silence of the people around the building only proved that. Jack nodded and continued past them. One of Gwen's former partners, Andy, if Ianto remembered correctly, stood at the door, eyeing them carefully. His expression promised repercussions from the police force for their lateness. The men blocking the door stepped aside and let the two members of Torchwood through. The sounds of faint snarling, screaming, and panting quickly assaulted the men's ears. Jack and Ianto pulled out their guns, clicking them off of safety and quickly scanning the area for any threats. There was the sound of approaching footsteps from up the escalator that was a few yards ahead of the two. Both of them trained their guns on the way up the escalator. A young man appeared, blood covering his body and a large cut on his arm. He was panting and he looked at the two with raw hope in his eyes.

"Are you the police?" he asked, staggering over, not noticing the guns pointed at him. Seeing his injured state, Ianto pointed his gun back at the floor and walked over to the man.

"There are ambulances outside. They can tend-" Jack was cut off as the man shook his head.

"No…. No. My daughter. She… She's all I've got. And I left her back there after that … thing appeared. You need to get her! She's only six. She's got blonde hair. It's all braided back.. She's wearing-" This time it was Jack's turn to cut him off.

"Sir. We will do what we can. Now get out of our way." The man gave a desperate look to Ianto and then moved behind them.

"Please. Hurry." Ianto nodded.

"We'll get her back to you." he said. Jack began ahead again and hurried down the stairs of the unmoving escalator. Ianto was right behind him, noting the streaks of blood that were on the glass sides by their knees. The whole scene was not promising. They quickly got off and listened for the horror around them. Instead, there was silence. And eerie, all-consuming silence. The only sounds that could be heard were the clacking of Jack's boots against the floor and the sound of their breathing. Ianto kept his eye out for a little girl hopefully cowering somewhere, unharmed, but chances were that she was already dead.

"Ianto." Ianto looked at Jack. "I want you to stay back here. I'll let you know if I find it."

"I can't let you do that. As far as we know, this weevil has killed forty or more people. I'm not going to let you be another." Jack rolled his eyes.

"As much as you might wish that, I'm not going to be another body… Well… Not after the first few seconds." Ianto frowned. As open as Jack was with his immortality, it was hard to grasp sometimes. Forever was a very long time. And that's how long Jack would live, it seemed. Forever. Ianto quickly dismissed the thoughts from his mind and rebuked himself for getting distracted. Ianto shook his head.

"I'm coming with. You can't help anyone who might be alive and injured if you're dead. Even if it is only for a minute." Jack couldn't argue with that. He nodded, obviously unhappy with the agreement. They advanced to the back of the mall, guessing where to go from the trails of blood. The first body they came upon was that of an elderly woman. Ianto resisted the urged to bend down and pull her eyelids over her eyes. The live should have priority over the dead, but it was hard. The death around them, every step he took, it reminded him more and more of Canary Wharf. More dead bodies, more blood, more destruction. Ianto pulled his eyes from the woman and continued onward. There was the sound of snarling.

"Are we going to kill it, sir?" Ianto asked, trying to imagine what they would do with it. He already had to take care of Janet and she was bad enough. Another weevil, one that had tasted this much human blood, would surely be a handful. Jack shook his head.

"No." he said, finality ringing in his tone. Ianto didn't argue. After seeing the whale-like alien being harvested for its meat alive, Ianto had more pity for these stranded beings than ever before. There was the sound of snarling ahead of them. Ianto tensed, knowing that they were getting close. This weevil would not go easily. There was a flash of blue down the hallway. Jack began to run after it. Soon, they came upon a horrific sight. There were thirty bodies piled on top of each other neatly, stacked like a pyramid.

"A weevil doesn't do that…" Ianto commented gently. The raw strength of the creatures made up for their lack of intellect and they never cared to clean up after themselves.

"There might be someone hiding under there." Jack suggested. "Go see." Ianto nodded. Jack put his back to the kneeling Ianto, his gun prepared.

"Hello?" he called. "Hello. This is Torchwood. We're here to help. If there is someone here, let me know." There was silence. "Jack, I don't think…" He looked at the pile in front of him. There had to be a reason for it.

"If there's no one in there, God help us, because weevils are getting smarter." Ianto agreed with the sentiment, but brought his eyes back to the pile. He gently began to pull the bodies off of each other. He heard the muffled sounds of something… He continued sifting through the remains until he pulled them all aside. Underneath them all was a young girl. She had blonde hair pulled back into two tick braids. She was crying. Ianto's eyes widened.

"Hello?" he asked. She looked up at him.

"It hurt me." she whispered. She had a large cut on her shoulder, very close to her neck. Ianto nodded.

"I'm sorry." he said awkwardly, unsure of what to say to her. She was the same age as Misha, his niece, and something about her struck too close to home. "How did you get here?" he asked, refraining from motioning to the pile of carcases.

"Daddy put me here."

"Ianto." Jack called impatiently. Ianto looked at her. He grabbed her from under her arms and hauled her out of the mess.

"Stay close to me, okay." he said, not daring to risk letting her run to the entrance alone and not wanting to leave Jack alone in case they found someone else that needed help. The scared little girl nodded and continued to cry gently. Jack led the way down the hall. The continuing stillness resonated hauntingly. A growl came from a fake tree in front of them, near the middle of the hallway. Jack advanced slowly, his Webley steadied on his left arm, his right hand ready to fire.

"Who's there?" he demanded. When he managed to get an angle on the creature behind the bush, he froze. This weevil was smaller than normal, only about five feet. It looked up from the body it was feasting on and snarled at Jack. Ianto raised his gun up and the little girl shrieked. Ianto didn't notice her pull away from him and leave the security behind him. The weevil shot to its feet and stared at Jack. The weevil launched itself at the dark-haired man with the full intent of killing him. Jack tried to get out his weevil-spray in time to avoid having to shoot the creature, but the alien was much faster than a normal onr. It promptly bit down on Jack's neck, spraying the blood from his jugular across Ianto's face. And that was when Ianto's pity and self-control evaporated. Too many had died. Too much chaos. Too much… The creature ran behind Ianto and tried to escape towards the main entrance. He fired one shot into the weevil's head, between its eyes. It fell to the ground. Ianto walked over to it purposefully. He pointed his gun into the creature's chest and fired. And other shot into its head again. And another shot to the neck. Ianto's eyes glinted with a deadly purpose. All he could feel was the warm blood across his face. Jack's warm blood. The sound of Jack's gasp back to life was what brought Ianto out of his trance seconds before he fired a fifth shot. Ianto whipped around and dropped to his knees, his suit getting bloodied.

"Jack." he said softly. Jack coughed a little and smiled.

"That was a nasty one." he said, sitting up. He looked at the blood oozing from the weevil's body. His face dropped slightly. Almost to himself, he said, "Well, I suppose it had to be done." He got to his feet and looked at the weevil's neck. "Looks like one of our tags." he commented. Ianto nodded.

"I don't remember one like this." he said, trying to calm himself. Ianto was about to turn away when Jack stopped him. He put a hand on Ianto's shoulder. He pointed to something. Ianto turned around and stopped. On the floor behind the weevil's body lay the little girl. She had a hole in her neck. Ianto ran over to her and bent down. He put a hand on her neck, feeling for a pulse and trying to stop the blood. With one hand to stop the bleeding, he used the other to begin CPR. When he noted the rapidly deteriorating pulse, he sped up his pace. Ianto pushed on her chest, above her heart, again and again, trying to revive the dead child. A hand slowly eased its way onto his shoulder.

"Ianto." he said gently. "Get up. It's over." Ianto's mind refused to register the defeat. He shoved his palms down again, forcing more blood to bubble out from the hole in her neck. "Ianto!" Jack said, more roughly, pulling Ianto back by his shoulder. Ianto spun to his side, landing on one of his knees and looked at Jack.

"She can't be dead! I shot her, Jack!" Sheer horror flashed across his face momentarily. Jack looked at the girl evenly.

"She was behind the weevil when the bullet exited its body. It's not your fault." he tried to argue.

"Not my fault? Was she supposed to know where the bullet would go?" Ianto demanded, bringing his silently tortured eyes up to meet Jack's. Jack brought a glance to the little girl who was on the ground. Her blonde braids were drenched in an ever-reddening pool of blood. Ianto's hands were dripping with it. He turned back to the corpse and slid his hands under her body. As he began to lift the thin cadaver up, Jack bent down by the weevil. He slung it over his shoulder into a fireman's carry and turned back to the other man. When he saw what the teaboy was doing, he frowned.

"Ianto, leave her." he said, changing the position of the weevil slightly. Ianto didn't change his actions. He continued to lift her from the ground. "Ianto, listen. We don't need to-" he was cut off by an empty stare from the younger man. Ianto looked at the bodies around them and then back at the little girl.

"I shot her, Jack." he repeated, oddly quiet and contemplative. "She's dead." Jack walked over to Ianto and sighed.

"There was nothing you could have done. It's fine." Jack said, deftly switching between his positions. He went from being Ianto's boss to quickly being his lover with gentle advice. Ianto understood this, but was still trying to understand what had happened. A small girl would never grow up and it was his fault. When Ianto didn't respond, a concerned Jack took the lead out of the building. He hefted the weevil back up on his shoulder and began to walk down the hallway where they had come from. He was about to command Ianto to put the body back where it had been and let the police handle it, but he knew that the young man would not do it and there was no point in wasting his breath. Mechanically, Ianto noticed that the building was just as silent as it has been when they first entered, as if nothing had happened. Jack walked up the broken escalator first using his some-what free left hand to activate his comm link.

"What the hell is going on, Jack?" was the first thing the immortal man hear through the link.

"Calm down, Gwen. Everything is under control." he responded, knowing fully well that it was a lie. "We're on our way back and we're bringing the weevil. And I want you to run a check on any weevils we've released recently.

"Quit wasting my time. We never release weevils." she said, hotly. Jack rolled his eyes.

"You can look at the tag yourself and then say that." He retorted and resisted the urge to look back at the oddly silent Ianto. "We'll be back at the hub in twenty minutes." he said and then disconnected the link. He looked down the hallway after the escalator to see the policemen and –women staring through the glass at him. He winked at then as they began to open the door for the two men. The sounds of crying and yelling could quickly be heard as soon as the barriers were opened.

"Well if it isn't Torchwood." Andy said, sceptically. He knew the death count and he was sure that it was all the fault of the organisation that released the killer alien. Jack nodded to him and began to walk out into the open. Immediately, the attention of the groups of people were directed to the two members of Torchwood. The deadly silence from the inside of the building quickly turned into hushed and hurried whispers of the formerly loud people outside. Ianto scanned the crowd, looking for the man they had bumped into when they first entered the building.

"Izabelle!" a familiar voice called. "Oh my god, did you find her?" the young man asked frantically, breaking through the crowd roughly. He stopped in his tracks when he saw the body in the young Welshman's arms. The young blonde was still dripping spent blood onto the ground. The hollow look in Ianto's eyes was concerning to Jack. He had never seen this emotion, or lack thereof, from the man. When the Torchwood team had shot Lisa, he had reacted in anger, when he had been convinced that he had become a serial murderer, he had been frightened, but this, this was something foreign. The void of emotion was terrifying and new.

"I'm sorry." Ianto said, trying to muster some type of sensation, willing something other than monotone to come from his lips. The man walked forward slowly, his breathing shallow. The look in his eyes was beyond pain, he was in agony. He put a hand on his young daughter's forehead and swallowed hard.

"She's still warm." he whispered, hardly daring to let the words out. Ianto nodded. Jack looked between the two. They needed to leave and let the police do their job cleaning up the mess. He looked around the noiseless mob around them. He didn't want to be here longer than he had to.

"I heard that this thing is from them! The police said they let it loose!" a woman hear the door shouted. Jack's worst fear was quickly realised.

"My mum's dead!" another voice shouted. What had been a completely noiseless group of people quickly turned into a deadly mob dealing with emotional turmoil, prepared to take it out on the most logical people- the ones who had caused the massacre. The yelling escalated as the man noticed something about his daughter. The gaping hole in her neck. His eyes widened. He knew what a bullet wound looked like from the telly. His baby had been shot. And the only people inside that building with guns had been the two mysterious men in front of him.

"You shot her!" he shouted, quick to blame the nearest person. "You killed her!" Violence flashed across his face. He threw a punch that landed on Ianto's nose and he then grabbed his daughter from Ianto's grasp.

"I'm sorry!" Ianto said, ignoring the blood that began to pour from his nose and mix with the blood of dozens of others on his suit.

"Murderers!" he cried. Jack had seen one too many situations like this in his time. He promptly grasped Ianto's arm and began to lead him to the Torchwood van. Still in a haze, Ianto tried to work out what was going on. He got in the passenger's side and Jack tossed the body of the weevil into the back of the van. He walked purposefully back to driver's side of the vehicle. People, the news spreading like wildfire, began to pound on the sides of the van. The chant of 'murderers' was quickly gaining popularity. The police hurried to push people back from the van as Jack started the car and began to move. Soon, he was away from the mob and onto the street back to the Hub. He glanced over at Ianto, who was staring blankly at the window in front of him.

"Ianto," he tried to comfort, but he received nothing by silence in return. He knew that he couldn't really tell him anything to comfort him, but it was how it would be, so he dropped the conversation until a more opportune time would come to console Ianto. Soon, he pulled into the lot near the Hub and looked over at the young man who suddenly seemed to have forgotten what happened. He was straightening his blood-stained tie and smoothing back his mussed hair. He got out of the van without recognising the fact that Jack was still there. He walking through the tourist office and down into the Hub, feeling numb. When the door opened to the main area of the Hub, he heard an all-too familiar chant.

"Murderers! Murderers!" His entrance attracted the entire Torchwood team away from the television where their attention had previously been drawn. Tosh jumped to her feet and ran over to him. She stopped a metre in front of him after noticing his appearance.

"Ianto, are you okay?" Gwen asked, standing up from the couch she had been on.

"You're looking a little pale, mate." Owen remarked, setting down the alien medical device he had been working on. Ianto simply shook his head.

"I'm fine." he reassured convincingly, even managing to put on a smile. "It was just… a bad accident." Owen stood up and walked over. He raised his eyebrows.

"Weevil got a punch in?" he asked. Ianto shook his head, pretending not to understand. "You've got a broken nose." the doctor stated. Before Ianto could say anything, Jack came into the Hub. Everyone observed that he was covered in his own blood. He flopped the weevil corpse onto a table and looked at Owen.

"You check out Ianto and make sure that he's okay. Gwen, I want you to contact the police and make sure that they keep this quiet. Tosh, hack all of the news sites and make sure that we were never there. The last thing we need is for…" he trailed off when he looked at the telly. He quickly brought his attention back to the team. "Shit. Okay. Scratch that. Tosh, monitor blogs and any information that might be being leaked." Jack looked back at the television and then began up the stairs to his office. Owen motioned towards the small medical bay with his head and led the way. Ianto followed as the others quickly went about their new allocations. When Ianto walked down the small set of stairs into the medical bay, Owen pointed to the autopsy table.

"Sit." he said. Ianto didn't argue. He sat down and looked at the holographic screen in front of his. Owen wheeled over a cart with a small machine on it. He brought Ianto's hand to rest on top of it. The screen in front of him soon showed his outline and began to scan through his body. "So who shot the girl?" he asked, rummaging through a box behind Ianto.

"I did." he said, forcing himself to sound like he didn't blame himself for what had happened.

"Accidents happen." Owen commented, unhelpfully, as usual.

"Am I free to go?" Ianto demanded, noting that the scan was clean with the exclusion of his mildly broken nose. Owen pulled out a bottle of painkillers and handed them to the teaboy.

"Yeah, sure. Just take two of these." he said. Ianto took the bottle from the Londoner and stood up. He walked out of the medical centre of the Hub and was quickly attacked by the chant of the mob around the mall. He ducked his head away from the screen and walked up to Jack's office. He opened the door to find the immortal man on the phone.

"Anything you need, sir?" he asked softly, trying not to interrupt the conversation. Jack covered the mouthpiece with his hand and looked Ianto over.

"Get yourself cleaned up." he ordered gently. Ianto opened his mouth to argue, but was stopped by Jack. "Go." he said, and took his hand off of the phone.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two: The Sound of Silence

Ianto looked at his face in the mirror. He winced as he prodded his swollen nose. With a frown, he looked at the old suit he was wearing, one that he had left in the Hub in preparation for something such as this. Ianto walked back out into the Hub's centre to find the desks of his co-workers vacated. Tosh's computers were shut-down and Gwen's bag was gone. Curious, Ianto walked back up to Jack's office. He found no one there, either, but there was a note on the desk.

_Ianto, ice your nose. -Jack._

The Welshman sighed and walked down the stairs. He walked back up the tourist office, beginning to get very sick of the trip. He walked over to the mini-fridge he had recently installed and found a small bottle of water. He held it to his nose, feeling incredibly silly. He forced himself to go all the way back down to the centre of the Hub. The telly was still on, flashing through highlights and, mostly, lowlights of the day. Ianto began to clean up the small table with his right hand as he used his left to hold the silly bottle in place. He shoved old pizza into a trashcan and then looked back up at the screen. A young woman wearing a too-tight-to-be-professional dress had a microphone in her hand. Behind her was the building Ianto had been in only hours before.

"Two hours ago, a horrible tragedy occurred here at Cardiff Shopping Centre, leaving forty-seven dead. No details have been released, but there are contradicting statements from the police and the eyewitnesses. The police claim that a gunman stormed the building, while witnesses claim that some alien animal came in and," the woman paused as though the idea might have been laughable, "began to eat and kill people." Ianto quickly changed the channel, wanting to avoid the image of the dead child haunting him. The next channel had the same building in the background. And the next, and the next. On the fifth try, Ianto stopped his movement. Being interviewed was the distraught father, tears streaming down his face.

"All of the bodies were mangled," he said, brushing tears from his face, "but my little Izzy was shot. In the throat. And the people who were supposed to come and help, Torchwood, I heard them called, they're the ones who did it." The look on his face darkened. "They shot a little girl." Ianto's breath slowed as he watched the pain across the other man's face.

"Can you describe the people that came?" an off-screen news reporter asked.

"There was a tall American and another man… wearing a suit… They had guns and they took the thing away after it was dead, I guess." He was obviously trying to keep composed.

"Mr. Davis, what were you doing here today?" the reporter asked.

"Shopping for Izzy's back-to-school clothes. She…" he choked back a sob. "I just got custody of her and I wanted today to be special…" Ianto stood, transfixed at the screen that was filling his mind with poison. The whole story was spinning out of control. One shot. One shot and the small girl's life had been ended. Faint ringing peeled Ianto's attention from the screen. It was from the phone in Jack's office. Ianto hurried up the stairs and walked over to the phone. He picked it up.

"Ianto Jones, Torchwood." he addressed, anxiety nestling in the pit of his stomach.

"Hello, Mr. Jones, is Captain Jack Harkness there?" the man on the other end asked.

"No, I'm sorry. Is there a message I can relay to him?" Ianto asked, knowing more and more with every second that this was serious.

"Tell him that, according to the secret petitions of Queen Victoria, we are at liberty to put Torchwood on an indefinite hiatus. The government has found Torchwood Three's performance to be subpar and a mockery of the established rules of the administration of Wales. The Torchwood building is to be evacuated in the next two hours and after that, it will be inspected by UNIT. We will inform him of any changes in the status over his cell phone. Good day." Ianto's breath left him shallowly. He blinked slowly.

"I will relay the message, sir." he said. The phone beeped, informing him that the man on the other end had hung up.

"So. What was that about?" Jack asked, moving from leaning against the doorframe to standing up. Ianto turned around, his expression neutral.

"We have been shut down." he said, as if testing the words out. They didn't seem right. Jack raised an eyebrow and walked closer.

"What?" he asked, positive that there was some miscommunication going on.

"In Queen Victoria's second note petitioning her advisors to allow the creation of Torchwood, she established that Torchwood could be shut down if their performance was found to be no longer necessary or useful." Ianto said, positive of his facts. He knew Torchwood rules and regulations better than even Jack. And in his memory, somewhere deep and tucked away, he remembered that fact. "And UNIT will be here to inspect the building in two hours. It must be evacuated before then." Jack blinked, thinking quickly.

"Ianto. You're serious?" he asked, still unsure that this situation could even occur. Ianto nodded. Jack pulled out his phone and began to dial a number. Ianto walked over to Jack's desk, thoughts surprisingly non-existent. Normally, he would have started organising the papers in front of him and fixing the office up, but he couldn't even concentrate on that. He sat back and stared at the ceiling. He listened to Jack's hissed threats and angered questions. After a minute or two of conversation, Jack angrily clicked his phone off and pocketed it. He walked over to the desk and pulled out a key. He walked out from behind the desk and opened a lock-box in the corner of the room. "Ianto, you call the team, tell them to get out of the country. UNIT would be all too happy to stick any of us into a prison cell at the first chance they get…" He pulled seemingly random items out of the box and pocketed some of them. He looked up to the silence tea-boy. "Ianto?"

"Yes, sir…" he said distantly. He picked up the landline and began dialling Tosh's number as Jack walked out. He hurried down the stairs, the clatter of his boots hitting the stairs ringing through the Hub. He walked over to Tosh's computers and pulled out a small thumbdrive from his coat pocket and plugged it into the computer. When he flicked the monitor on, the message on the screen read 'encrypting information. 16% complete.' Jack then walked over to the technology that Owen had left out in his small medical bay. Jack glanced over them to make sure there was nothing that UNIT reverse-engineer and mass produce. Most of the devices were too complicated to recreate, so he wasn't too concerned. He walked back to see the computer's percentage had climbed up to 29. Jack glanced up at his office through the many plants to see Ianto on hanging up the phone. Ianto looked down at him and gave a solemn nod. He walked out of the office. "Anything else, sir?"

"Get two tickets to America. The next flight we can make." Ianto nodded and disappeared behind a tall, leafy plant to organise their escape. Jack looked at the TV to see the mall they had been at not two hours before. He rolled his eyes at the mob that was gathering around it, demanding the 'truth.' They would never accept the truth, so the whole thing seemed ridiculous. Jack glanced back at the computer. It was done changing all of the files into nonsense, so UNIT couldn't read their information. The code was something Jack had seen in his Time Agent years and only another Time Agent could translate it, so their information was safe from prying eyes. He pulled out the thumbdrive and put it back in his jacket pocket. When he turned back to middle of the room, Ianto was standing in the middle of the room, staring at the TV. Jack walked over and clicked it off. "Did we get them?"

"Under one of your aliases, yes." Jack nodded.

"Good. How much longer do we have?" Ianto looked at his watch and then checked through the math in his head.

"One hour and seven minutes." Jack ran through his mental checklist, thinking about what they needed to do before they left the Hub. He knew that he couldn't risk leaving anything that could potentially be damning or even dangerous around for UNIT or the government to find.

"We'll stop by your flat, grab some of your things, and then book it to the airport." Ianto shook his head.

"I don't need anything from my flat." he said. Jack didn't believe him, but also knew that the sooner they got to the airport, the greater chance they had of avoiding questioning by the government and trouble. Being late for a flight would bring too much attention to them.

"Okay." Jack said dubiously. He did know, however, that there were always accounts they could use in their escape, and the only thing that really mattered that Ianto had was his diary. And his laptop…. Jack looked around for the computer. "Ianto? Your laptop?" Ianto motioned to the top of the building.

"Tourist office." Jack nodded and began to walk out of the Hub, looking for Myfanwy. "Jack, she can take care of herself." He nodded and walked out of the main Hub, adrenaline still pumping. When they reached the Ianto's office, Ianto grabbed both his laptop, and as Jack expected, his diary.

"Are we ready to go?" he asked. Ianto gave a vague nod. "We'll take your car."


End file.
